


Deep In

by Kenophobia



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Far Future, Gen, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:01:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23381365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kenophobia/pseuds/Kenophobia
Summary: What if Wesley never found Angel under the ocean? AU from the end of season three.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Deep In

**Author's Note:**

> I recently decided to repost all of my old fics from ff.net, so if this happens to be familiar, that's why. Enjoy.

To his credit, Gunn spent months searching. For a guy who hated vampires and had never completely trusted even this one, he put in a lot effort. He did it partly for Fred, who although she cared about Angel, saw herself as doing it for Connor. In reality however Connor was the first one to give up, walking out one night, claiming that he could take care of himself. Eventually with no new leads, even Fred was forced to concede that Angel had probably been dust for months.

Wesley never bothered looking at all. 

***

Light. Bright light so blinding he thought he would turn to ash. That was what the brightness meant wasn’t it? He couldn’t remember how or why but he remembered that light was bad. Sound. It was the loudest he had ever heard. Where were these thoughts coming from? When had he ever seen light or heard sound before, when there was no before? There was no time, only a single endless moment and the silent darkness. Then his body jerked in a reaction to the sensory overload and he found he was capable of movement. Had he ever moved before? His muscles certainly felt like he hadn’t. Then he opened his eyes and the light got even brighter.

***

Dr. Balia stared down at the patient. Just another patient; that was how she was trying to think of him. He had been found six weeks ago by an ocean exploration team who had thought him to be merely a well-preserved corpse. The forensic anthropologists had been delighted at the discovery of a body whose manner of dress pointed to early 21st century but whom had such an unusual means of burial, (a murder victim they hypothesized),but had grown confused when they failed to discover any signs of even the slightest decay or anything that could possibly have preserved the remains. Then came the accidental discovery. One morning a scientist had been examining Gryphon (as they’d taken to calling him on account of his tattoo) under bright lighting, and when his eyelid had been pulled back, Gryphon’s pupil had constricted. Corpses didn’t do that, they weren’t capable of reacting to anything, including light. Only the living could interact with the living world.

Scientists everywhere were shocked and the anthropologists had been replaced by medical doctors who specialized in patients who were alive. One of the first tests her team had done was a brain scan, and sure enough, they’d found activity, minimal activity, but certainly more than one would expect to see from the dead. After that they’d tried various ways to revive him, including defibrillation and electric brain stimulation but nothing had been successful. Currently, she was there alone at night observing the effects of a blood transfusion, though most of her colleagues agreed that there probably wouldn’t be any. She looked at him and sighed, Gryphon was a strong and healthy looking young male. What had caused him to be in this state was a mystery. Just then he twitched and his eyes flew open.

***

As his mind began to clear, Angel took in his surroundings; there was a woman, and lots of bright harsh light. They appeared to be in some kind of hospital, which were places that he had never known much about. Hospitals in his day were mostly long corridors of beds, looked after by nuns, nothing like all of the shiny bright metal that surrounded him now. 

Slowly things began to come back to him. It was not unlike when his soul had first been returned to him and it had taken a moment for everything to come back. Being under the ocean hadn’t exactly been like some kind of stasis, he remembered being conscious for at least some of the time, but It had been like being on the edge of sleeping and waking. He hadn’t really known what was real or even if he was real. 

He knew now though, and unlike when he was cursed he had some good to remember along with the bad. People would be waiting for him, Fred, and Gunn, and Cordelia, and he would have to figure out what he was going to do about Connor. First though he needed to get out of here, a hospital was not a good place for him to be.

***

The moment she realized that something was happening, Dr. Balia leapt up, ran across the room, and slammed shut the heavy steel door which locked automatically. Gryphon was being kept in a secure facility not only because they didn’t want anyone unauthorized to have access to him, but also because should he actually wake up they certainly didn’t want him to just walk out the front door. It turned out her concern had been justified because the first thing Gryphon did was walk over to the door and try to open it. When he found he couldn’t he attempted to kick it down. A futile effort thought Dr. Balia initially, but she was shocked to see that the reinforced steel was actually dented. As the man turned to glare at her she found herself more intimidated than she could ever remember being before. 

***

Angel felt strong. You wouldn’t think so after all that time starving under the sea but right now he felt stronger and better fed than he could remember being in a long time. The room around looked like it belonged in science fiction, he never ceased to be amazed with how much technology had progressed since he had been alive. He couldn’t let himself be distracted though; the woman in there with him had prevented him from leaving and now she would have to answer his questions. “Who are you and where are we?” he snarled, looking as scary as he could with his human face. 

“My name is Dr. Celia Balia; we’re at a research institute in LA.”

“What were you doing to me?” He really did not want to be experimented on.

“Nothing, I just gave you a blood transfusion to try and revive you.”

“Human blood?” 

“Of course, what else would we use?” 

A full complement of human blood, no wonder he felt so good.

“Who told you to use blood to revive me?” he asked.

“No one, but nothing else was working” she replied.

So, they didn’t know what he was, that was good. But they knew there was something off about him otherwise he would be at a regular hospital and not a research institute. If he didn’t want to be the one to alert humans to the presence of vampires, he had to get out of there now.

***

“Open the door” the man snarled at her.

He seemed so big that she had to stop herself from taking a step back, but she had learned a long time ago not to let people intimidate her.

“I can’t, this facility is designed to be secure; the door cannot be opened until a security team arrives in the morning.”

He practically growled. She tried to think back to the psychology she had learned in medical school, since she was a researcher she had never really expected to use it, but every doctor had to learn the basics of dealing with difficult patients. The key was to keep him calm, keep him talking. 

“Tell me what you remember” she said.

“Tell me where I am” he replied. 

Okay, she could do that. “You’re at The Jameson Research Institute, in Los Angeles.” 

“And what kind of research have you been doing on me exactly? What do you know about me?”

They should really be having this conversation in a room of trained professionals, but she plowed ahead anyways. “Not much, what do you know about you?”

He looked mad enough to spit acid, and also a little . . . fearful? So, he did know something then. 

“What is the date?” he asked instead of answering her. 

That was another awkward question. From what they could tell he had been under the sea for hundreds of years, and Dr. Balia couldn’t guess how he might respond to that. It wouldn’t be a good idea to lie to him though, she needed to gain his trust. “It’s September 8th, 2453.”

***

Angel’s mind took a moment to process what she had said. Perhaps he had heard wrong? She may have misunderstood the question or mixed up the answer. He looked around the room, searching for some clue. It was full of mysterious instruments and shiny surfaces. It did look futuristic, but from his perspective so had much of the 21st century. He forced himself to think of other things; he could easily figure out where and when he was after he had escaped. The last thing he needed to do right now was dwell on thoughts of Cordelia dead, Fred dead, Gunn dead, Wesley dead. Buffy dead. Connor dead. Luckily, he was an expert at pushing things to the back of his mind. He shook himself from his mental reverie and turned his attention back to the woman. 

“It would be in your best interest if you let me go now” he said.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to, once that door is sealed only a few highly ranked security officials have the ability to open it, and they won’t be here for hours, so you’re just going to have to relax.”

In another few hours it would be morning, and it would be too late to escape, the sun and the team with guns would be enough to keep him prisoner. In fact, they probably wouldn’t leave him unguarded at all from now on. It might take days for him to escape, and who knew what they might figure out in the meantime. Frustrated, he shot over to the door and gave it another of his most powerful sidekicks. The whole room shuddered but nothing gave. Defeated he sank to the floor, and without the distraction of escape his thoughts ran freely. Cordelia dead, Fred dead, Connor dead . . . 

*** 

Dr. Balia looked at the man, wondering what he was. He seemed to have enormous strength, and maybe she should have been scared, but the best scientists never seemed to have less fear than was good for them, and what she now was mostly curiosity and a vague sense of pity. Studying him as he sat on the floor holding his head in his hands, she noticed he didn’t seem to be breathing. She had thought maybe that once he woke up, the normal bodily functions of his respiratory and cardiovascular systems might resume, but apparently not. He was a mystery she wanted to solve, but looking at him now, the expression of despair on his face seemed all too human. Having woken him up, she felt responsible for him, and with that a strange urge to comfort him. 

“We just want to ask you a few questions, we’re not going to hurt you” she said, feeling a bit guilty for holding him prisoner. 

He didn’t reply, but he did look up. When his eyes met hers the look in them was so filled with animosity that she felt her mind freeze for a moment in fear. She wondered vaguely if she should try sedating him, but she suspected that might be easier said than done. And besides, her team had spent all of their time thus far trying to get him to wake up. She glanced at her watch; it was another two hours until morning and reinforcements. 

“Do you have a name?” she asked. “We’ve been calling you Gryphon because of your tattoo, but if you want us to call you something different . . .” she trailed off. 

“You can call me Angelus” he replied. Dr. Balia nodded once and then looked down quickly. 

***

Angel wasn’t entirely sure why he had chosen to tell her that name, since he hadn’t used it in a very long time. Maybe it was because there was strength in that name, even if it wouldn’t mean anything to the doctor, and right now he needed all the strength he could get. 

“That’s Latin, isn’t it?” Dr. Balia asked. “Like the Catholic prayer. Are you Catholic?”

Angel was a little caught off guard by her question. “Are you?” he returned. 

“Yes, I am, in fact” she said as she pulled a small crucifix on a delicate chain from where it had been lying against her skin to rest on the soft white cotton of her lab coat. Angel had to turn away from it. It wasn’t just that crosses were painful to him, there were simply too many memories associated with that symbol. Dr. Balia looked vaguely hurt by his reaction, like she had just shared an intimate part of herself and wasn’t expecting to be rejected in that way. Angel forced himself to meet her eyes again. Sometimes he was amazed that the religion that had seemed obsolete to him the 18th century continued to survive through hundreds of years of scientific and technological advancement. 

“I used to be” he finally answered. 

“So, what happened?” Dr. Balia asked, trying to keep him talking, keep him calm. 

“It doesn’t matter; too many things” he said looking flustered. Then, suddenly, his expression turned to anger again. “Isn’t keeping people prisoner against the Hippocratic oath?” 

“Oh, we stopped using that ages ago, back in the 1960’s I think. It has all sorts of archaic ideas like respecting your teachers and not intentionally harming patients.” Her wry smile contrasted with Angel’s frown. 

“Whatever” he mumbled. “What’s going to happen to me when everyone else gets here in the morning?” He hated being trapped and the fresh human blood pouring through his veins only served to increase his nervous energy.

“I’m not sure. Everyone will want to talk to you I suppose, they’re all really eager to hear where you came from, what you are. They’ll probably also want to examine you, do some tests” she trailed off. Now that she was actually sitting there talking to him it was a lot harder to think of Gryphon/Angelus as just another test subject. 

“And did you mean what you said before? About the year?” 

“Of course.” 

“Then they’re all gone.”

She looked at him. It hadn’t really occurred to her before what it would be like to wake up after hundreds of years. She had been too wrapped up in the medical mystery he represented to consider it before but she supposed he must have had people he cared about, who if they weren’t like him, would be long dead. She was filled with a deep and unexpected sympathy towards this unusual stranger. 

“We don’t have to be enemies you know” Dr. Balia said. “If you just cooperate I’m sure this will all go very smoothly.” She was trying to convince herself as much as him. 

“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll all be great friends.”

“Well, what would you even do if you got out of here? This isn’t your world. We can protect you here, teach you, give you time to adjust.” She was starting to sound desperate now.

Angel had to admit to himself that he had no idea what he would do when or if he got out of here. It was a daunting prospect, but it wasn’t the first time he had had to start over with nothing, and a small hopeful part of him still insisted that the doctor might be lying about the date. Either way, he wouldn’t know anything until escaped. 

“Make all of the excuses to yourself that you want”, he said, “but that won’t change the fact that you are betraying both your profession and your God by keeping me here.”

She was quiet for a long time. She sat with her head bent, and eventually Angel realized she must be praying. “You’re right” she finally murmured, so quietly that he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear her without his enhanced senses. She stood up, then stated much more boldly “The Lord sets prisoners free”. Then she strode purposefully towards the door, now dented, that led out of the laboratory, and began to punch numbers into a keypad. With a soft click, the reinforce steel door unlocked. 

“But I thought you said you couldn’t open it.”

“I lied. Do you really think we would design a facility where staff could become trapped? What if there was some kind of emergency, like a fire, or a freakishly strong and irritated test subject, and we needed to evacuate quickly?” 

“You’re really letting me go?” 

“Yes, are you really just standing there after all the fuss you put up a minute ago?”

“What will happen to you if I go missing?”

“Oh, I’ll tell them you threatened me or something.”

“I would have if I’d known it would do any good” he said somewhat apologetically. 

She frowned. “Just get out of here.” Dr. Balia knew that some part of her would always regret this act of kindness for the rest of her life. As a scientist, she could never abide an unanswered question and now the biggest unanswered question of all was walking out the door. 

***

Angel didn’t wait to be told again. He pushed through the door without a backwards glance and found himself in a long white hallway lined with more windowless steel doors. The door at the end of the hall however, had a narrow window near the top through which he could see the night sky just starting to be illuminated by the first hints of dawn. Angel walked out into an unknown future.


End file.
